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Suitability of gridded climate datasets for use in environmental epidemiology

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology volume 29, pages 777–789 (2019)Cite this article

Abstract

Epidemiologic analyses of the health effects of meteorological exposures typically rely on observations from the nearest weather station to assess exposure for geographically diverse populations. Gridded climate datasets (GCD) provide spatially resolved weather data that may offer improved exposure estimates, but have not been systematically validated for use in epidemiologic evaluations. As a validation, we linearly regressed daily weather estimates from two GCDs, PRISM and Daymet, to observations from a sample of weather stations across the conterminous United States and compared spatially resolved, population-weighted county average temperatures and heat indices from PRISM to single-pixel PRISM values at the weather stations to identify differences. We found that both Daymet and PRISM accurately estimate ambient temperature and mean heat index at sampled weather stations, but PRISM outperforms Daymet for assessments of humidity and maximum daily heat index. Moreover, spatially-resolved exposure estimates differ from point-based assessments, but with substantial inter-county heterogeneity. We conclude that GCDs offer a potentially useful approach to exposure assessment of meteorological variables that may, in some locations, reduce exposure measurement error, as well as permit assessment of populations distributed far from weather stations.

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Acknowledgements

Part of this research was conducted using computational resources and services at the Center for Computation and Visualization, Brown University. This work was financially supported in part by the Open Graduate Education and Brown-MBL Programs from the Graduate School of Brown University, and by the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Dr. KW was supported by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant F32 ES027742. The content of this report is the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsoring institutions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Box 1846, 324 Brook Street, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Keith R. Spangler

  2. Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Brown University, Box G-S121-2, 121 South Main Street, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Keith R. Spangler, Kate R. Weinberger & Gregory A. Wellenius

  3. Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, Brown University, Box 1951, 85 Waterman Street, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Keith R. Spangler, Kate R. Weinberger & Gregory A. Wellenius

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  1. Keith R. Spangler
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  3. Gregory A. Wellenius
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Correspondence to Keith R. Spangler.

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Spangler, K.R., Weinberger, K.R. & Wellenius, G.A. Suitability of gridded climate datasets for use in environmental epidemiology. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 29, 777–789 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41370-018-0105-2

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